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Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

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Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#321

Post by josephcsible »

gnfargbl wrote: post #225
dpeckett wrote: post #184

This is typical of Hetzner, if a product SKU is losing money they very quickly make changes, even going as far as to discontinue the product entirely (eg. GPU servers). They definitely don't seem to be a fan of loss leaders. I'm guessing somehow the traffic usage patterns of their USA customers was very different to their EU counterparts, or the cost of expanding network capacity was a lot higher than anticipated. It…

I have no complaints at all about this model. They work out the cost of providing a service, then they charge that cost plus a markup. They keep doing things that make them money. They stop doing things that don't make them money. It seems like a straightforward way to run a business.

I have one big complaint and one little one. The big complaint is that they didn't even give one business day's notice, and the little complaint is that they raised prices at the same time they cut what they were offering by 20x, instead of doing one at a time.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#322

Post by themgt »

As a Hetzner bandwidth enjoyer affected by this, this is why (HN cough) multi-cloud/dedi k3s is great, because if you get rug pulled you just migrate to another provider with better prices.

That said, $1/TB for bandwidth overage seems pretty fair. I empathize with the complaining but if the new price is such a ripoff everyone should be recommending what cloud VM provider they're migrating to for a better deal.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#323

Post by johannes1234321 »

czhu12 wrote: post #283

What are some examples of applications people are running that: 1. Require 20TB of bandwidth / month 2. That bandwidth can't be shielded by Cloudflare and others? Is it like... real time video streaming? Gaming servers? I can't imagine a web app getting anywhere close to that. I run a mid sized NFT art creation website that generates both images and GIF's ( https://mintables.club ) and with over 100000 users at peak,…

Besides needing it: Not having to fear that an attacker spamming the machine with Mail or web requests or something incurs a bug traffic bill gives better sleep at night.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#324

Post by tonygiorgio »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

Always felt like they were in the business of blaming and hating their customers. Cloud providers that nitpick and judge every aspect of their customers’ business details and technicalities are a huge operational risk. This archaic practice is the reason generic cloud orchestration was a must, and it’s just not needed anymore.

I don’t care how cheap they are. You get what you pay for.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#325

Post by pas »

drpossum wrote: post #56
summarity wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what they (explicitly) said in the email: users using next to no bandwidth were offsetting the costs for the heaviest users. That was no longer sustainable.

I think I'm missing something then. If that were true, wouldn't you lower the network allowance and then make the product cheaper or at least priced the same? This would have the no-traffic users paying "their fair share" and the overage costs (or higher traffic addon) would make up for the heavy users. The current plan makes everything more expensive for everyone. They would do this if a) they never had a sustainabl…

They recently entered the US market, so almost surely there was some honeymoon period (ie. investment to gain market share), but likely there's a significant difference between how the IXP/bandwidth/peering market works in the US compared to their home market (EU).

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#326

Post by reaperman »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #320
lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

[flagged]

What led you to assume that GP misrepresented their identity? The way I read the comment - they put their real info but was accused of putting fake info.

How would you even attempt to rectify that?

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#327

Post by Buttons840 »

viraptor wrote: post #304
lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

It's always a balance between how much fraud you allow and how many real customers you reject. They set their threshold at an interesting level, but maybe they're happy with that choice.

You're right. But unfortunately this mindset moves us closer and closer to having algorithms exclude people from society and life. And as the stories already told here show, it can happen to any of us for no apparent reason.

It's like, imagine a magic wand that, if waved, would make life a little better for 99% of society, but much worse for 1%. Would it be moral to wave that wand?

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#328

Post by this_user »

qwertox wrote: post #318
lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

When I ordered a VPS at Netcup (a Hetzner alternative) they called me and asked me for the name of the hotel next to my place to check if I really lived at the address I provided. I guess that if i would have needed to look it up, that is, struggled a bit with the answer, they would have denied me as a customer.

I had the same thing, but this was a business address while I was working remotely and had no idea about the area. Told them as much on the phone while looking the answer up on Google Maps. They just accepted that and opened the account.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#329

Post by crowcroft »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

I signed up and immediately got banned because I was accessing through a VPN, which I think is a common problem others have had. I emailed them and their advice was to stop using a VPN and try again.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#330

Post by klabb3 »

viraptor wrote: post #304
lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

It's always a balance between how much fraud you allow and how many real customers you reject. They set their threshold at an interesting level, but maybe they're happy with that choice.

What type of fraud exactly? You mean like stolen CCs? It feels very medieval as a financial trust system if every little vendor can’t trust payments, even when you pay up front? Like this is in some ways worse than cold hard cash. And then we pay VISA premium on top of that, for the convenience of being mistrusted..
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